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moylan | 13 years ago

app development on symbian used to be a chaotic affair till nokia brought in signed apps. after that the apps started to dry up. it became a hurdle for lone developers that wasn't worth the effort.

i'm sure apple would organise it better but it is still another hoop to be jumped through to get an app developed.

as to openess i still have an iphone 3g. i had the cash saved up for a prepay iphone 3gs and was to go and pick one up the following weekend when apple banned google voice. it was an indicator of control so i spent the cash instead on android. the iphone 3g will be my last purchase from apple thank you very much.

discuss

CountSessine|13 years ago

app development on symbian used to be a chaotic affair till nokia brought in signed apps. after that the apps started to dry up. it became a hurdle for lone developers that wasn't worth the effort. i'm sure apple would organise it better but it is still another hoop to be jumped through to get an app developed.

Symbian Signed is what you're talking about. And it didn't just dry-up app development - it killed free software on Symbian.

But that's a completely different situation than Apple's GateKeeper - with Symbian Signed, Nokia decided that they didn't want to take on the hassle of being a CA the way Apple is with GateKeeper, so the Nokia program required applications to be signed with a $800 SSL certificate. How is anyone making a Symbian app in their basement going to shell out for that? Some free software developers had to post convoluted instructions to their users on how to use the Nokia developer website to self-sign their programs. Others looked to commercial software developers to sponsor them to buy certificates. It was a disaster.

taligent|13 years ago

The hour spent organising the certificates is nothing compared to the months spent designing, developing and marketing the app.

And ALL developers would be happy to see less malware around.

moylan|13 years ago

i'd rather a platform were i have to be careful to avoid malware rather than a platform were there is a single 'gateway' to what apps can be installed. how can that gateway ever be considered impartial in a for profit system?